What’s Screening: July 21 – 27

~ Lincoln Spector

If you want vintage cinema playing in Bay Area theaters, follow the auteurs. This week there are movies from Alfred Hitchcock, Spike Lee, Sergio Leone, Luis Buñuel, and Preston Sturges. But some films are not made by directors, but by studios such as RKO or Studio Ghibli.

Festivals & Series

Festival Recommendations

To see what’s worth watching at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, read Part 2

Double bills

A+ Notorious (1946) & C+ Suspicion (1941), Stanford, Saturday & Sunday; double bills start at 3:45pm, 7:30pm, 5:40pm

Notorious: A scandal-ridden Ingrid Bergman proves her patriotism by seducing and marrying Claude Rains’ Nazi industrialist. And all the while, true love Cary Grant grimly watches. Sexy, romantic, thought-provoking, and scary enough to shorten your fingernails. Read my Blu-ray Review.
Suspicion: If there ever was an Alfred Hitchcock film ruined by the studio, it was his third American movie. Joan Fontaine stars as a young bride who begins to suspect that her new husband, Cary Grant, just might be planning to murder her.

Theatrical revivals

A+ Top Hat (1935), Lark
֍ Sunday, 10:00am
֍ Monday, 6:00pm

If escapism is a valid artistic goal, Top Hat is a great work of art. From perfect clothes to the absurd mistaken-identity plot to the art deco sets, everything about Top Hat screams “Don’t take this seriously!” But you don’t need realism when Fred Astaire dances his way into Ginger Rogers’ heart with those Irving Berlin songs. Read my A+ appreciation.

A+ Do the Right Thing (1989), 4-Star, Thursday, 5:00pm & 7:30pm

Spike Lee’s masterpiece just may be the best fiction film ever made about modern race relations in America. For a 34-plus-year-old film, it feels very much like the here and now. By focusing on a single block of Brooklyn over the course of one very hot day, Lee dramatizes and analyzes everything wrong (and a few things right) about race relations in America. This beautifully made film is touching, funny, warm-hearted, and humane. Read my Blu-ray review.

A- Tremors (1990), New Mission, 6:00pm

Few horror movies depend so much on wit, and so little on gore. The very small population of a tiny desert town starts shrinking fast when giant predators come up from the ground and drag their human meals under the sand. Likely meals contain good ol’ boys, eccentric gun nuts, an annoying kid, and, of course, a beautiful woman who is also a visiting scientist. The movie has its gruesome moments (it is a horror film), but it mostly balances on that fine line between comedy and suspense. I love the fact that the monsters are never explained.

A- My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Lark
֍ Saturday, 10:00am, Dubbed
֍ Sunday, 3:00pm, Subtitled
֍ Monday, 4:00pm, Subtitled

This Studio Ghibli feature may be one of the best cartoons ever for very young children. Adults can also enjoy the beautiful animation and their children’s delighted reactions. Two children and their father (mother is in the hospital) move into a rural house that turns out to be haunted. But it’s not haunted in a bad way. The magical creatures, including the powerful Totoro, make friends with the new people in the neighborhood.
Warning: You should tell your kids beforehand that it takes place before everyone had a phone in their pocket.

A- Harold and Maude (1971), Roxie,
֍ Tuesday, 7:00pm
֍ Wednesday, 6:30pm

At a time when young Americans embraced non-conformity, free love, ecstatic joy, and 40-year-old Marx Brothers movies, this counterculture comedy romance between an alienated and death-obsessed young man and an almost 80-year-old woman made total sense. The broad and outrageous humor helps considerably. But I do wish screenwriter Colin Higgins had found a better ending. See my full discussion.

B+ Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), BAMPFA, Saturday, 3:30pm

After The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Sergio Leone had a much bigger budget for his follow-up western. This time, he could afford Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, and Charles Bronson in the Clint Eastwood part. Leone even shot part of the film in Monument Valley. The movie starts with what is probably the best opening sequence in western history, followed by a scene where Fonda – the blue-eyed icon of decent America – murders an unarmed young boy in cold blood. With the bigger budget, Leone could create a sense of epic grandeur. But the story, which involves the coming railroad and who owns the land, is something of a mess. Part of the series Claudia Cardinale Once Upon a Time.

B+ Belle de jour (1967), BAMPFA, Saturday, 7:00pm

About as close as one gets to a Luis Buñuel commercial hit, for reasons that probably have more to do with sex than art. Catherine Deneuve plays a bored housewife who starts working in a brothel. At least I think that’s what happens; a lot of the story takes place in her imagination. Although not as profound as it thinks it is, it’s funny, charming, sexy, and playful in ways unlike any other movie. Part of the series, Luis Buñuel’s Magnificent Weapon

B- The Great McGinty (1940) BAMPFA, Thursday, 7:00pm

Preston Sturges’ first film is mild by comparison to the films he made later. This cynical story delivers a powerful bite. A poor man turns into a politician with the help of graft. Here’s the promise of Sturges’ greater works ahead. Stuart Klawans will be there to introduce the movie. Part of the series, Preston Sturges: More Than Comedy.

Continuing engagements

Movies I can’t review

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Published by Lincoln Spector

Lincoln Spector writes about cinema, technology, and cinema technology. From 1986 through 2008, he wrote Gigglebytes, the first technology-oriented humor column. From 1977 through 2016, he wrote PC World's Answer Line column and blog.

One thought on “What’s Screening: July 21 – 27”

  1. Lincoln! I’ve been trying to reach you… check your Facebook messages!Cheers,Annie

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